Patchwork Poems

These are just plain fun while also a challenge. To take lines
from a variety of poems and create something that carries sense and form
can also be rewarding. To me, it's more like playing, this collaborating
with hundreds of real poets. They write the lines and I put them
wherever I want.

When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
Still do the stars impart their light.
What is your substance, where of are you made?
Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife
To see the world in a grain of sand.

Say not the struggle naught availeth.
He that is down needs fear no fall.
All is best, though we oft doubt.
Go and catch a falling star.

A muvver was barfin' 'er biby one night.
He's a little dog with a stubby tail.
God, we don't like to complain,
There are strange things done in the midnight sun.
Somebody said that it couldn't be done.

Blessings on thee, little man.
Go thou thy way, and I go mine.
Ere I went mad,
I ain't afeard uv snakes, or toads, or bugs.
May nothing evil cross this door.

* All "dust" lines patchworked from
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Edward Gibbon)

The "Dark" Side of Poe*

In visions of the dark night
His countenance was of a dark snuff color.
On the dark part of the satellite
The world grew dark before mine eyes.
Dark draperies hung upon the walls
Through many dark and intricate passages.
Soon after dark they arrived
By a cluster of dark rocks.

It was a dark night when I bade her goodbye
Above those dark and hideous mysteries.
The earth grew dark and its figures passed by.
It was soon after dark on this same evening
St. Eustace called for me at dark.
A feeble cry arose from a dark object that floated rapidly by.
The horrors of this dark deed are known only to one or two.
After dark bitterly did we now regret.